Mon 21 Sep 2009
Will SaaS Lead Open Source to Extinction?
Posted by Oudi Antebi under Software as a Service BI[5] Comments
Over the past few years, open source business intelligence has played a significant role in the BI marketplace. But just why, exactly, is the cloud marketplace suddenly putting such a heavy strain on the use of open source BI software?
As is the case with a lot of market shifts, cost plays a crucial role here. The original adopters of open source BI were SMBs without the resources to spend on complex business intelligence solutions. But with the evolution of SaaS, the parameters of “inexpensive” BI solutions are shifting away from on-premise open source towards solutions that don’t require costly hardware.
Well, advocates for political correctness will be happy to hear that cloud is chasing open source out the window, especially in the BI space.
SaaS business intelligence solutions are starting a run to dominate the BI market. Without the need for hardware, extensive time-to-market, or extra resources for setup, the cost to set up a BI solution plummets – even from the relative cost-effectiveness of open source.
Cloud computing provides other significant benefits. For one, SaaS leverages an extremely scalable BI platform. Especially for SMBs with room to grow, this is an admirable characteristic. On another hand, cloud computing allows metaphorical “out-of-the-box” functionality – another important factor for small businesses that don’t have the time or resources to devote towards a comprehensive on-premise setup.
So will cloud computing eventually lead to the extinction of open source? Not exactly. Cloud computing providers use open source to power their datacenters. But direct-to-consumer open source BI solutions have already begun to lose steam. Look for cloud computing as the future of business intelligence.
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September 22nd, 2009 at 8:53 am
Your post is lazy, and badly under-informed. I should preface this by saying that I won’t be drawn into a debate framed as “SaaS BI *versus* open source BI” since it’s a false premise that assumes that one will “win” over the other. Reality is that SaaS BI and on-premise BI both have their place, and users of open source and closed source BI will get both via SaaS or on-prem models depending on their need.
But some facts are required in this discussion. “Heavy strain” on open source BI software? “losing steam”?
Checking Google Trends, comparing my company, Pentaho, to Panorama Software, based on search volume. Note the trend lines. Unfortunately, you can’t compare searches on “open source BI” to searches on “SaaS BI” because Google hasn’t registered enough searches on “SaaS BI” to even have data (yet).
http://tinyurl.com/mlrgfq
Website traffic. Pentaho appears to be running steadily at about 3X-10X Panorama’s unique visitors on a monthly basis.
http://siteanalytics.compete.com/pentaho.com+panorama.com/
Here’s a survey published in Intelligent Enterprise on attitudes towards open source, SaaS, etc. I think SaaS usage will continue to grow and am not anti-SaaS, especially given how many of our customers are SaaS companies who deliver integrated, SaaS BI using our open source BI technology, but the survey shows more adoption of open source than SaaS. It’s not conclusive “proof” of anything, but at least it’s some actual *data* relevant to the discussion.
http://bit.ly/KmFI
If you do have any valid third-party data suggesting that SaaS BI is specifically growing [at the expense of open source BI], you should have used it in your post. Do your homework next time, and don’t underestimate how much opportunity SaaS BI and open source BI have to reach new users, and disrupt the large mainstream of the BI market. Debating “SaaS BI [VS] open source BI” takes two overlapping models (meaning that they’re not mutually exclusive) that imho both have tremendous go-forward market opportunity and pretends that success for either occurs at the other’s expense.
-Lance Walter
Pentaho Corporation
September 23rd, 2009 at 10:30 am
I welcome the debate Lance.
This post gives our personal belief and point of view. we appreciate your different opinion.
The Google Search link that you posted though does not reflect at all searches that relate to panorama. We have a large % of people that search for Panorama BI, Panorama Microsoft, Panorama SQL Server, Panorama SaaS so just taking Panorama Software doesn\\\’t reflect.
September 24th, 2009 at 4:11 pm
I could point out many flaws in this post but instead I’ll ask a question:
How many SaaS BI vendors went out of business this year, compared with the number of open source BI companies that went out of business?
James Dixon, Pentaho
September 24th, 2009 at 4:25 pm
You say that ‘We have a large % of people that search for Panorama BI, Panorama Microsoft, Panorama SQL Server, Panorama SaaS’.
According to Google trends those searches, when combined together, total about 2% of the searches for Pentaho. If those searches make up a ‘large %’ for you, your stats are very weak indeed.
James Dixon, Pentaho
January 19th, 2010 at 2:01 am
cloud computing and Saas will surely take the first position and left open source BI left behind in near future.